If you like taking journeys to despair and melancholy, look no further than this album by London’s Dave Renegade. This boy wears his pain on his sleeve and is not afraid to admit it. He himself acknowledges that it is not for the faint hearted. It’s like the musical equivalent of a few hours sitting in Miss Haversham’s, torn and faded wedding dress in her dark and cobwebbed room in Dickens’ Great Expectations.

However, it is very listenable to unless you are a Kyle Minogue fan of course. Dave has a soft and vulnerable voice, which conveys these acoustic songs perfectly. He is aided and abetted by Pete Kosanovich on various instruments and production, and after reviewing his latest album I can hear that he has developed his own production style, of which one of the qualities is you can hear the room it was recorded in, which makes the listening experience more intimate.

Just Because You Are Gone (doesn’t Mean I Don’t Love You) sets the tone for the album, a song about his fathers death and how it affected him. There are songs of death littered all over the album, So Many Hearts, The Hurtful Kind and Absent Friends, all deal with the deaths of close friends, a lot of them fellow musicians and loved ones. I must admit I love this kind of songwriting as it immortalizes the people you are singing about, as long as the song is accessible their memory is kept alive.

The Emotion Well is my favourite. A song about emotional pain which was so bad it turned physical. He needed to eject that pain into the universe through this song, and he succeeds in great measures. It’s like when you listen to The End by The Doors, or Springsteen crying out “heart and soul” on Drive All Night on The River, it’s not easy listening, but you know the artist has gone deep inside to pull out that emotion.

A song about putting to bed a broken relationship, Scattering The Ashes is musically reminiscent of No Expectations, as the piano and guitar interplay on The Hurtful Kind reminds me of Johnny Cash’s rendition of Hurt.

An upbeat Power And Healing which Dave dedicates to Jesse Malin when he plays it live, ends on the repeated line “if we could just keep that feeling, everything is going to be okay”, the type of line you wish you’d written yourself. It is a song about the power of music to connect with people emotionally, and bring us all together and heal.

Fifteen tracks altogether of powerful emotional feelings. It is well titled as it draws you into a gallery of gothic ghosts, making you think and feel with every unfolding song “I traveled through some deep dark valleys in the writing of this album and I wish I didn’t have to live them to write them” says Dave.

At the end I wanted to give him a big hug and tell him it is all going to be ok. But I think he knows that. ****

Review by Andy Sharrocks

Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK

Since early 2020 Josh has been entertaining us with exclusive monthly live sessions,

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David Randall presents a weekly show on Get Ready to ROCK! Radio, Sundays at 22:00 GMT, repeated on Mondays and Fridays), when he invites listeners to ‘Assume The Position’. The show signposts forthcoming gigs and tours and latest additions at getreadytorock.com. This “Best of 2025 reviewer choices” show was first broadcast on 21 December 2025.

UK Blues Broadcaster of the Year (2020 and 2021 Finalist) Pete Feenstra presents his weekly Rock & Blues Show on Tuesday at 19:00 GMT as part of a five hour blues rock marathon “Tuesday is Bluesday at GRTR!”. The show is repeated on Wednesdays at 22:00, Fridays at 20:00). Pete’s Best of 2025 was first broadcast on 23 December 2025

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Power Plays w/c 1 December 2025

We feature all the artists selected in this sequence in 2025.

Featured Albums w/c 1 December 2025

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003 – 2025 (Singer Songwriter)

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